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It wasn’t enough for Trey Gowdy and a gang of Relublican assholes to meddle in foreign policy by writing directly to Iran – a pretentious and vain effort to undermine a sitting president in the exercise of his exclusive authority to negotiate with foreign governments and which flirted with the line between being an asshole and being a traitor.
In the wake of President Obama’s announcement of a negotiated agreement with Iran regarding their nuclear program, the Republicans have unanimously curled into the fetal position and begun crying like red-headed stepchildren.
Perhaps if they hadn’t marched in lockstep opposition to every single thing the president has ever attempted to do – and not as a matter of principle but as a matter of determined ratfucking – they would still have a single tattered shred of credibility on which to hang their mewling, pants-wetting objections.
They opposed health care reform (an idea cooked up by their own greedhead hacks at the Heritage Foundation), supported DADT and DOMA, and rejoiced over Hobby Lobby but screamed about activist judges and tyranny at Obergefell. They are petulant fucking children who expect and demand that everything – every single fucking thing – be determined in their favour. Always.

Nevertheless, let’s be specific here. They are shedding tears today for the death of all things good, right and true as evidenced by this specific deal with Iran. Some history may be illuminating:
In 1953 Republicans acting in the service of British Petroleum sent the CIA to assassinate the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mossadeq, and install the brutal, tyrannical murderer and puppet the Shah.
After the Iranian people turfed his criminal ass (which the United States saved from ever facing the justice demanded by his own people), they spent the next 40 years provoking, demonizing and lying about Iran.
Then, GW Bush fabricated blatant lies about Iraqi WMDs and, in the greatest foreign policy disaster of all time, illegally started a war to remove the one element that stood as a bulwark against the rise of Iranian influence in the region – another American puppet and BFF of Don Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein.

Following the destruction of Iraq and the consequential rise of ISIS (which both America AND Iran would like to see destroyed), the Republicans NOW mewl and bawl that any deal with Iran that does not give the GOP every single thing their cowboy delusions imagine they must have (and are downright eager to bomb Iran if they don’t get) must be opposed.
And their castrated, orange-hued leader, who supports torture, rendition, indefinite detention and survives by drinking the panic sweat from Lindsey Graham’s scrotum, has the nerve to call Iran the largest sponsor of state terrorism.

Political commonwealth (not to mention reason) is not possible with the stubbornly ignorant, mendacious, venal pieces of worm shit that comprise the GOP.

What Charlie Pierce calls Tiger Beat on the Potomac has a very serious bit on how concerned is the Republican brain trust that Donald Trump will hurt the party’s appeal with women and minorities – that his bombastic attacks on everyone and everything will damage the eventual candidate (which, of course, could never be Donald because Republicans are serious people).
They are especially worried that his plastic popularity and name recognition will earn him a spot on the debate stage.

“But as of now, he would be in — over 2012 Republican runner-up Rick Santorum, who won 11 states and around 4 million votes last cycle; over John Kasich, the popular Ohio governor of a key swing state; over South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a leading foreign policy voice in the field; and over Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, known as a policy wonk…He’d also make it in over Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO whom the party establishment desperately wants on the debate stage. Fiorina has earned strong reviews from early-state activists, and party insiders say her inclusion in the debate is critical — both to demonstrate the GOP’s diversity and to help male candidates find the right tone in connecting with female voters.”

In what universe is Rick Santorum described as 2012 runner-up instead of a giant theocratic dick with a snowball’s chance in hell of anything?
John Kasich is running because everyone else is and, hell, why not?
Lindsay Graham is a pants wetting panic button with his tongue drilled up the backdoor of the Senator who created Palin.
Bobby Jindal…a policy wonk? Gentlemen, put down the peyote.
Carly Fiorina is a complete failure in business, electoral politics, truth telling, and is only welcomed by the GOP to deflect accurate charges of rampant sexism in their attacks on Hillary Clinton. As a secondary benefit, her presence in the debates will allegedly prevent the other candidates from using terms like, “Broads,” “Skirts,” or, “The women folk,” when pushing policies to restrict or ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Leaving aside for the moment Trump’s unmatched ability to be a blithering, loud-mouthed shnook of truly epic proportions, what is it that troubles Politico? Is it his calling all Mexicans rapists and drug dealers? Nope:

In recent months, he’s said that Fiorina got “fired viciously” from HP and “got clobbered” in her 2010 California Senate loss to Barbara Boxer (she lost by 10 points.) He’s ripped Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as “very weak” on immigration. He’s called Jeb Bush “an unhappy person” and said he “couldn’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag.”

Firstly, in what universe is Donald Trump not the perfect embodiment of the contemporary Republican party?
Blatantly racist, sexist and anti-immigrant while insisting he isn’t; absolutely certain he knows everything, is right about everything and everyone else is a loser. Invents “facts” that suit whatever happens to be oozing out of his yap at the moment. Committed birther who demanded to see the president’s long form birth certificate and then wouldn’t accept the document when offered. Anti-tax, anti-government, anti-environmental protection. Solution to every foreign policy problem – a big stick, “Make them behave.”
Donald Trump is a boasting, fabricating, ignorant, spoiled rotten piece of shit. He is loud and proud and doesn’t care that he is fucked-in-the-head wrong about everything. Donald Trump IS Republican.
The Republicans don’t want him on the debate stage because he reveals the rest of them for what they truly are. The only reason thinking people ought to be concerned is that his presence makes the rest of them appear reasonable by comparison. They are not – not more thoughtful or smart or able to govern…they are not less racist, sexist or homophobic – they’re just less like Foghorn Leghorn and they would prefer Donald stop hollering, “Now, see heah, boy!”

These venal assholes will sacrifice even the appearance of doing their job, while putting god bothering, science denying morons like Inhofe in charge of the environment, in order to make another petulant, stubborn, childish fucking attempt to roll back any gain that helps anyone not named Koch, or fails to hew to their imbecilic, ignorant Conservative principles – principles that plainly amount to being willfully stupid and throwing tantrums when they don’t get to actually do the brainless goddamn things they promised Cletus and the rest of the Klan in Sisterfuck, Arkansas in order to get his snake handling ass off the porch and into a voting booth.

I find the argument that there’s no difference between the R’s and D’s; that in a two party system you’re fucked no matter how you vote, to be one of the more particularly shallow and annoying positions.
One might wonder why I give a rat’s arse (being a Canadian living in Asia) but the vast influence of the USA – economic, military, culture/media – is sufficiently pervasive that everyone should care.
And the differences are significant:
One party supports alternative energy technologies, the other chants “Drill, baby, drill!”
One party extended health care to 30 million citizens, the other wants to end Medicare and replace it with a system of vouchers.
One supports gay marriage and gays serving openly in the military, the other is opposed to equal rights and eats at Chik-Fil-A en masse to prove it.
One party wants children to get a good education and seeks to continue such programs as Pell grants, the other wants creationism taught in the science class.
One party supports a woman’s right to control what happens to her own body, the other has brought literally dozens of bills and amendments seeking to limit or destroy that right.
One party seeks to extend unemployment benefits to the long-term jobless during the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, the other wants to cut FOOD STAMPS.
One party wants a progressive system of taxation, the other demands that massive tax cuts for the rich continue because they will trickle down…eventually…despite 30 goddamn years of concrete evidence that you have to have your head up your ass to have bought that shit sandwich in the first place.
One candidate in this presidential election saved GM (and all the jobs in all the factories that make shit that GM uses to make their cars – we’re talking about FAR more than just the people directly employed at General Motors), the other said it would be better to let Detroit go bankrupt.
One candidate in this election caught and killed the architect of 9/11…the other one calls the president a “Foreign policy failure” which, after his recent trip to London, Israel and Poland is just fucking ballsy.
I’m really sorry that the imaginary, completely unelectable, Magic Liberal you wish would take dictatorial control of the entire planet and do everything exactly as YOU think it should be done isn’t on the ticket…ANYWHERE. But cynically tossing off, “Both sides are just as bad,” is not only a pathetic cop out, it also happens to be demonstrably WRONG. Political change takes time and effort…and it comes in small steps if it comes at all, and it is often subject to being rolled back when assholes like GWB and Dick Cheney get hold of the reins. And letting that imbecilic, ignorant, plastic buffoon and all his Bush/Cheney cohorts back into the white house is EXACTLY how gays will get stuffed back in the closet, and woman will be told to buck up and just go ahead and have that rape baby.
So…no difference. None at all.

The Republicans just don’t know when to quit. First they accused the Obama administration of attacking religion by mandating that employer-based health insurance cover birth control. Obama changed the plan: Employers associated with religious organizations could decline to offer coverage that included contraception, but then the insurance companies would have to provide that coverage directly to the employee.

Having had the legs cut out from under their “Attack on Freedom of Religion” bullshit, the GOP can’t seem to stop fucking that chicken.
They’ve attached an amendment to a bi-partisan highways bill that elevates their misogynistic stupidity to yet new levels. From TPM:

The amendment by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) purports to focus on contraception, but it goes well beyond that. As written, it would permit all employers to deny any health services in their insurance plans that aren’t in accordance with their “religious beliefs and moral convictions.” The measure states no limitations or criteria, which means employers have free rein to decide what medical care their employees may or may not receive.

Since when are employers allowed to determine what health care services may be accessed by their employees? The argument that the employer pays for the health care is simply an ugly fucking lie. Employers don’t pay for health care. They do pay a portion (very rarely all) of the PREMIUMS…but that’s an extremely long shot short of paying for health care. See this link for a quick primer on how insurance works if you’re at all inclined to make that argument.

One is forced to wonder which the Republicans hold more dear: preventing women from having access to birth control as a sop to the fundamentalist religious nutcases that have taken over a large segment of their base, or giving their corporate ass masters more power over those they employ. For Republicans, most assuredly a case of tastes great AND less filling.

The time has come to bury these backward, hate-mongering asshats in the political dustbin of history. They have no ability or desire to govern; to help the American middle class, the poor, minorities, workers, women, children, students…
They are nothing more than a bunch of rabid, bible thumping plutocrats held hostage by the stupid, racist, hateful ignoramuses they welcomed into their big tent over the past 30-plus years, and who are given their daily chores by the corporate thieves to whom they so eagerly whore their souls.

The time has come to do these ignorant, obstructionist bastards like they did Joe Pesci in Casino. Come November, we drag them into a polling booth in the middle of a cornfield and beat them near to fucking death with a Louisville ballot. If they’re still breathing the next morning, bury whatever’s left alive.

What the right has — as Gingrich discovered last week to his chagrin — is a ruthless identity border patrol, with agents spread throughout the political system. Step over any one of a number of lines, even lines that didn’t exist just weeks ago, and those agents will inform you, with all the subtlety of a truncheon to the kneecaps, that you are no longer within the conservative nation.

They were warned. They were told by Liberals years ago that inviting racists, xenophobes, homophobes, bible thumpers, gun nuts and every other placard swinging extremist of any stripe into the fold as a means to gin up votes was a mistake; that the Southern Strategy was short sighted and the cost on the back end would be too steep.
Now the drooling, crazed, single issue mouth breathers have finally coalesced into the Tea Party. The evil has been unleashed and, having opened Pandora’s box, the last few remaining William F. Buckley style Conservatives have no fucking clue how to control it or stuff it back in there. The bastard spawn of hate-based politics has returned, expects dinner on the fucking table, demands bloody red meat and it doesn’t give a rat’s ass who it has to gnaw on to get it.

Eric Cantor, the GOP’s idiot step-child and a thoroughly reprehensible little ass-kissing ultra-conservative sycophant, has demonstrated once again the heartless, craven, ugly reality of the Republican style of governance. In the wake of a tornado wiping Joplin, Missouri off the map, Cantor demands that any disaster relief provided to the victims must come at the expense of further budget cuts.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

Meanwhile, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) is on the record saying that he would not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless “we have major cuts in the size and scope of the federal government.” He went on to define this as abolishing the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. Another Republican who’s willing to hold the national and global economy hostage in order to achieve the wingnut goal of dismantling the government.

Another genius from Georgia – there must be something wrong with the water supply to create AND elect two total fucking imbeciles of this magnitude:

Rep. Rob Woodall (R-GA) faced criticism this week when video was released of him telling a constituent that she should sponsor her own health care instead of using the government’s Medicare program.

The Georgia Democratic Party released more video Wednesday from that same town hall event where Woodall explained why he wouldn’t give up his own government-funded health care program.

“You take government-subsidized health care, but you are not obligated to take that if you don’t want to,” Democratic activist Ilene Johnson told Woodall. “Why aren’t you going out on the free market in the state where you are a resident and buy your own health care?”

“It’s because it’s free,” Woodall replied. “It’s because it’s free. The same reason I went out to Walgreens and bought Activon when I don’t have any arthritis pain. Because it’s free. Folks, if you give people things for free, don’t blame them for taking them.”

It’s free because the citizens goddamn well PAY FOR IT. Meanwhile, this same ignorant buffoon screams for tax cuts and wants Medicare dismantled.

Facts are not sufficient to overcome cognitive dissonance. Reality is no cure for delusions, especially the sort of schizophrenic hallucinations the GOP have been living with for 40 years.
They don’t fudge a bit. They don’t try to put a slight spin on the issues / slant perspective a smidgen in order to offer a different cast…let the light strike from a fresh angle. They lie. They just fucking lie. All the time about everything. And there’s never any penalty for it.
When you point out that they’re lying, they lie about having lied, point their dessicated, shit stained fingers right in your face and scream, “YOU’RE THE LIAR!”
Trying to run a country with these fuckers in it is like trying to make a marriage work when your spouse is running up the credit cards, drunk off their ass every night, beating the children, fucking everything they can get their hands on, shitting on the dining room table, keeps a loaded gun under their pillow, refuses to feed the dog, alternates between random bouts of sobbing and heaving lamps at your head, and constantly belittles you for being the source of all the problems because you just don’t understand them and aren’t helping out.
If they won’t seek help, at some point it becomes justifiable homicide; an act of pure self-defense.